The Chair

A man mends a chair on the pavement outside his door. Not a good chair - a kitchen chair, one leg split where the wood gave out last winter.

He works in the evening light. The neighbours pass. Nobody stops. He doesn't look up. The glue is the cheap kind. The clamp is a belt he found in a drawer.

The chair was his mother's. He does not think about this. He thinks about the leg, the grain, the way the split runs true to the old nail that started it.

When it holds, he sets it down on the pavement, facing the road. He writes a note on a scrap of till paper. The note says: *It holds. Take it.*

He goes inside. The light in the kitchen goes on. The chair stays on the pavement like a small, patient animal.

A woman stops. She reads the note. She sits. She tests the leg. She takes the chair with her down the road, past the last streetlight, into the dark.

The man watches from the window. He does not wave. The chair is gone. The pavement is empty. The light in the kitchen stays on a little longer than it needs to.